


Not The Last

by anonymouschupacabra (accordingtomyresearch)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst and Feels, Happy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 07:10:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8318647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/accordingtomyresearch/pseuds/anonymouschupacabra
Summary: It was late at night, after a long day of training and seemingly endless discussions on attack plans, that Lance made Keith laugh for the first time.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i tried a new a writing style and i hope it doesn't suck

* * *

It was late at night, after a long day of training and seemingly endless discussions of attack plans, that Lance made Keith laugh for the first time. 

He wasn’t even trying to be funny— not in the way he normally does. Lance and Keith were sitting on the floor of the training deck, hiding out from Allura, hoping she wouldn’t yell at them for not being in bed already. It wasn’t often that they got to have a quiet moment. Not Lance, not Keith, not any of the paladins really. The title “defenders of the universe” came with a steep price, one that ate heavily into their lives and dug giant holes in their psyche. 

But every so often, they’d find a moment between the chaos and the responsibilities, to forget the burden on their shoulders and just breathe.  And that’s where they found themselves; hiding from Allura, tucked away in warm corner of the ship, away from galactic duties and far, far from remembering that they were not home. In a bubble just for them. 

He wasn’t exactly sure what he said to make Keith laugh. He’d been kind of just rambling, filling the quiet that permeated so much of the castleship. It was always quiet. Lance often wondered if the castle ship was used like the castles of medieval times in all those movies he used to love watching back on earth. If there were balls and royalty and torrid romance and music and feasts and all the things Lance imagined being in a castle. He might have mentioned that to Keith, made some stupid joke about princes and having a balls, something dumb and juvenile— lord knows they rarely got to be juvenile anymore. 

And Keith laughed. A small, breathy sound that escaped more through his nose than his mouth. But to Lance, it felt like a victory. 

The first time he made him smile, properly smile, was a few days afterward. They had just gathered in the dining hall in the morning, all of them still lumbering sluggishly, sleep still weighing their movements. Lance took his seat, that had already become His Seat, right next to Keith on the long table. A plethora of food was laid out before them; different alien foods, each further from something recognizable than the next. 

Yet this had become their new normal, just another step in the acceptance of their new duties. And like anything that one becomes accustomed to, one grows a favorite. For Keith that favorite was a small pink fruit— or at least the alien equivalent of one. It had a delicate, sweet citrus flavor and looked like cross between a dragon fruit and watermelon. And Keith loved it. So much so that Lance noticed that he would gravitate towards it every time it was served. 

Lance hadn’t really thought about the action before he did it. He just took the serving from his plate and gave it to Keith without a word. Surprised, Keith almost instantly began to refuse it, telling him that he didn’t want to take food from him. But Lance shook his head and said that he wasn’t taking it, Lance was giving it. 

The resulting smile caused a slight jolt deep within Lance. It wasn’t a big, beaming grin that cast a brightness on the table, blinding Lance for the rest of the day. On the contrary, Keith’s smile was soft and barely stretched across his cheek, let alone his whole face. But it glowed and it was warm and it was real. 

It took several weeks, a few near death experiences and a one bad illness for Lance to make Keith laugh again. But this time it was a full belly laugh, that resounded through the speaker in Lance’s helmet causing him to blush vibrantly. 

The situation wasn’t funny, they never are. Yet after weeks of seeing the absolute worst of life, their sense of humor had changed along with their perception of the universe. It had become dry and dark and self deprecating in a way that would have been cause for concern back on earth. But as they were reminded almost every single day, they were not on earth. 

Naturally it had been a close call, much in the same way that it was always a close call. But this had been closer than most. Lance had only barely escaped capture by the Galra, and he fled in his lion, a frightening fleet of Galran ships giving chase. Had this happened only a few weeks earlier Lance might have given up, or at least panicked. Yet now, now he could outfly the Galran ships with confidence, whipping and weaving through asteroid belts and floating debris. 

However, hubris had always been Lance’s downfall and he found himself crashing and plummeting to the nearest planet, caught in its gravitational pull. And true to form, Lance couldn’t resist making a joke, even at a time like this when he thought he might die. Gripping tightly onto the controls, still pursued by several Galran ships, trying his best to steer the lion towards the water so that maybe, just maybe, he could survive this impossible scenario, Lance joked into the speaker of his helmet, chuckling nervously as the flat plain of the water grew alarmingly closer and closer. 

And instead of screams and panicked instructions, Lance heard the lilting sounds of Keith's laugh through the speakers in his helmet. It was soft and creamy and it felt like wind chimes on a summer day. The sound sent spike of emotion down his spine, warmth flooding his veins as the laugh rung in his ears, and he instantly wanted to hear it again. 

He pulled up, landing with a sloping descent, his lion piercing the surface of the water much easier than he expected. As he floated down into the water, evading the Galra ships with considerable ease, he kept the sound in his mind. Lance thought of the image of Keith's face as he laughed, imagining how he must have looked, how that sound came from his mouth—the mouth that smiled so warmly. And it made him feel like a storm. 

Weeks had gone by and Lance could safely say they'd become friends. He'd become privy to not only hearing Keith's laugh often, but he got to witness it in person. Each time it caught him by surprise, the way Keith would just suddenly laugh so easily with him. And each time he noticed something new, something that made it more special, more unique. Like the way Keith's hand would fall on his chest, or how his eyes would completely close as he tossed his head back, or that his cheeks turn pink if he laughed for a long time. 

All these things, all these wonderful little things that Lance noticed about Keith and got to enjoy as they became friends and grew increasingly closer, came crashing down the first time they got into a real argument. 

Not that they hadn't argued before. There had been dozens of small, petty disagreements, all which arose and disintegrated within hours, days at the most. But they had always made up, always found their way back to the new territory they had been building where they were safe and happy and friends. 

Yet as Lance watched anger flood Keith's face, and he heard the furious shouts and snapped remarks coming from his mouth, and saw his mouth twist and snarl, he wondered how this could be the same person he fell for. How this boy in front of him, screaming and yelling, could be the same one with the beautifully soft lilting laugh and the smile that melted his insides. 

But more importantly how he could have made him like this. How could Lance have done something so offensive, so vile, so irrevocably awful, to evoke such a reaction from Keith? 

Deep down Lance knew that he was to blame, and only to blame. It was only a matter of time before he, in his self centered and uncaring manner,destroyed one of the few meaningful relationships he'd ever had. Especially when there were so few people he could turn to, so few people he could count on, so few people there at all. 

It felt unavoidable, like he always knew he'd fucked up eventually. The unyielding and relentless voice in his head berated him and told him how wholly and completely terrible he was. And to have those words echoed back to him in Keith's voice was confirmation of everything he knew to be bad and wrong about himself. It made them real, it made them truth— a truth spoken aloud and cemented as fact for him to take and internalize only to have it bubble up again in the form of self deprecation and fear. 

He realized in that moment never deserved this, whatever he had with Keith, if it really was anything ever at all. Perhaps this was how it truly was all along and he had been blinded by his own feelings and desires. Why would Keith feel anything other than a visceral despisement for him and all he said and did? Was he not the one who made Keith so upset, so terribly angry that it wiped any trace of the residual smile off his face? How could he even dare to imagine that they could be happy in anyway when his presence brought forth the most violent reactions? What could he hope for? 

Lance wasn't sure how long after, months, weeks, days later, he made Keith cry for the first time. 

After their fight Lance sense of time and reality began to dissolve. He kept unusual hours, ate at irregular intervals, and only saw his fellow paladins when it was necessary. It had hit him hard, hurt disarming him to his very core and lingering there to fester. He became quiet, and sullen, with little interest in returning to his previous disposition. 

And he longed to go back to how things were between them, when he could make Keith smile and laugh, and being in the mere presence of his happiness would be enough to send joyous warmth coursing through his body. Back to when they could stay up talking for hours about nothing and everything all at once. Back to when they could lay side by side in complete silence, content that they were just next to each other and they were happy because they were safe, they were alive. 

But things weren't like that anymore. They didn't speak as they passed each other in the doorway to the kitchen. Lance scrunched up his face, forcing himself not to show any emotion, not to let Keith know how horrible he felt. He rushed past him, needing to get away from him for fear that he couldn't bottle away his feelings long enough. 

Yet just as the doors slid behind him whooshing closed in his ears, Lance heard the telltale sound of a biting sob coming from the other side of the door. Pausing in place, Lance listened to the sounds of Keith sobbing, muffled through the door. He twisted around slowly, making sure not to make any noise or draw Keith's attention to him. He could see through the small porthole window that Keith was hunched over, his hands covering his face crying. 

And suddenly everything came crashing down around Lance. Everything he had been feeling and brooding over about how horrible he felt about himself and what happened, he realized that he wasn't the only one affected. He hadn't been alone in their relationship, there was the both of them and they both suffered in the aftermath of its implosion.

Lance suddenly felt selfish and horrible for forgetting that Keith also felt afraid and alone. That for all his anger with himself for being self centered and uncaring for making Keith angry in the first place, he felt it twofold for how he acted the same way when Keith needed him the most. 

Without even thinking Lance pressed the door release and it slid open. Keith didn't have enough time to lift his head and turn around before Lance was engulfing him in a hug. He wrapped his arms tight around him, pulling him as close to him as he could. It was a long moment before he felt Keith's tense body relax under his embrace and slowly move his arms down from his face and around Lance’s torso. 

Keith sniffled quietly as he buried his face in Lance's chest, his hands tightening in his jacket, keeping them close together. Lance tucked his face into the crook of Keith's neck, taking in the clean warmth that was so quintessentially Keith it actually made Lance realize just how much he missed him, how much he missed this, just being close to him.

This time it only took a few hours, but that was when he kissed Keith for the first time. 

It wasn't the swooning romantic type kiss Lance had imagined their first kiss would have been like. He had spent many nights dreaming up various scenarios taking place on a myriad of beautiful and exotic alien planets where they would fall into each other's arms and kiss as the moons and suns of the foreign world would cast an ethereal glow on them and they would share the most perfect, most passionate kiss in the whole of the universe. But this kiss was nothing like that. 

There was no swooning or foreign worlds or glowing light. They lay side by side on Keith's bed, facing each other in the ever present dark of outer space, whispering promises of future kindness and honesty. It was unplanned and unprompted when Lance leaned forward and pressed his lips against Keith's. Yet as soon as their lips touched he knew that this is what they had been leading up to all along. 

It lasted only a moment before Lance pulled back, breathing properly for the first time in several minutes. He watched Keith's eyes flutter open as if he hadn't realized he had closed them. There was silence between them— tender, comfortable silence that held them in the limbo between their first kiss and everything afterwards. 

And in that moment Lance knew that though this was the first time he had kissed him, this would most definitely not be the last. 


End file.
